Good morning Swim Team Families!

It was wonderful to see so many new and returning faces at the Meet the Coaches and Swimsuit Try On event on Tuesday!

This email is especially geared toward new swim team families, though a refresher can be helpful for returning families as well! It is a summary of how our season swim meets will go. Most of this was covered by Andrew at the meeting, but I know it can help to have see it in your inbox too! And for an even more fleshed our version of this, you can reference our team website: 
https://lprclazers.swimtopia.com/
It has so much information about everything you could possibly want to know about swim team!

There are typically two meets per week, with a few additional special circumstance meets.
Every Saturday, we have A meets. These meets are against the five other teams in our division (Division 15) and are scored as a team. Three swimmers from each age group will swim per stroke at these meets. There are also relays at the end of the A meets. Our team always submits an A relay team for each age group and the mixed age relay. The A team is the relay team competing for points in the meet. We usually also submit a B relay team. The B relay team is for exhibition only- they cannot score points. However, swimming in a B relay is a great way to experience swimming at an A meet or to experience swimming in a relay. They are fun!

Saturday A meets are typically seeded on the Wednesday nights before a Saturday meet so you will not know if your child is swimming in the A meet until late in the week, usually by Thursday.

We also swim B meets every Monday. B meets are not necessarily against teams in our division and are not scored on a team basis. Heats are seeded based on time so swimmers should swim against other swimmers with similar times. Each athlete can swim in up to two events at B meets. Everyone gets ribbons based on how they scored within their heat.

Time trials are on Saturday, June 10th. Meets kick off with our first A meet on Saturday, June 17th and our first B meet on Monday, June 19th. Our last regular A meet with be on July 15th followed by an IM Carnival on July 17th and Divisionals on July 22nd. July 22nd is also the evening of our swim team banquet! It is a short, packed season!

We use the SwimTopia app/website to schedule our meets and certain other events.
Within SwimTopia, you can mark your child as “attending” or “not attending” each meet and time trials. For B meets, if you mark your child as “attending,” they will definitely swim. For A meets, if you mark your child as “attending,” you are really marking them as “available,” and they will find out if they are swimming late in the week after the coaches have seeded the meet.

If you know your availability now, please go ahead and mark it! If you don’t know it now, please mark it as soon as you know it. Meets are seeded on Wednesdays so if you wait to mark your availability until after that, it will likely be too late to be in the meet. Please only mark yourself as available if you truly are. We can’t always substitute a replacement swimmer if someone cancels after the meet is seeded.

SwimTopia is also where you mark which volunteer duties you’d like to do at each meet. There are MANY volunteer duties to fill at each meet. For example, timing alone requires 18 volunteers: each of the six lanes needs 3 timers- every meet! Please expect to have at least one member of your family volunteer for as many meets as you can. The meets cannot run without everyone stepping up to help.

Most volunteer positions will need to wear navy or dark blue bottoms and a white top to meets. This does not apply to snack bar workers, grill chefs or meet set up/take down volunteers, but it does apply to timers, clerks of course, marshalls, stroke and turn judges, referees and starters. 

Some positions require that you have taken a training course with NVSL either this year or last year to be allowed to perform them. We welcome anyone who wants to take or re-certify in an NVSL training course to do so.

Thank you for reading and helping all of our kids have a smooth and fun season ahead!